A number of electrical and/or electronic components in motor vehicles is continuously increasing. This trend is due to attempts, firstly, to improve comfort for occupants of the motor vehicle, and, secondly, to improve safety during operation of the motor vehicle. Particularly for the purpose of increasing safety, ever more complex assistance systems are used. These assistance systems assist a driver of the motor vehicle and intervene in dangerous situations in order to prevent accidents. In principle, the assistance systems are also able to control the motor vehicle completely and without intervention by the driver, so that autonomous driving is possible.
As the number of electrical or electronic components increases, more installation space is accordingly required, but installation space is very scarce in a motor vehicle. Attempts are therefore made to also accommodate at least some of the electrical and/or electronic components in locations where they have not been arranged or have been arranged only in specific cases to date. Increasingly, a windshield is at least sometimes used to arrange the electrical and/or electronic components in the vehicle. Up until recently, only an interior rearview mirror was fastened, for example via a suction cup, to that side of the windshield that faces an interior compartment of the motor vehicle. However, the interior rearview mirror had no functions that would make cabling of the interior rearview mirror to the on-board electronics system of the motor vehicle necessary. However, modern interior rearview mirrors have electrical and/or electronic functions. Electronically dimmable mirrors exist for example.
For example, it is known in a case of taxis that a current price of the taxi journey is displayed in the interior rearview mirror. Furthermore, the interior rearview mirror can be connected to a reversing camera of the motor vehicle, as a result of which a separate display in the dashboard of the motor vehicle can be dispensed. The reversing camera is usually activated and its image signals displayed only during reversing. However, it is also feasible to display the image signals from the reversing camera permanently in the interior rearview mirror. In this way, the traffic situation behind the motor vehicle in question can also be observed by the driver when the motor vehicle in question is heavily loaded and therefore the view through the rear windshield is obscured. A measure of this kind is also suitable for transporters that do not have a rear windshield and therefore there is no option of observing the traffic situation behind the motor vehicle in question via the interior rearview mirror.
Further electrical and/or electronic components that can be arranged in a region of the windshield are rain sensors and cameras, where the cameras serve, in particular, to identify road signs, as a result of which, for example, a speed of the vehicle can be accordingly adjusted.
In order to be able to arrange the electrical and/or electronic components in the region of the windshield, housings that usually have at least two housing parts are used. A housing of this kind is known from DE 20 2006 020 938 U1. A first housing part has a fastening area that the housing part in question bears against that side of the windshield that faces the interior compartment of the motor vehicle and can be connected thereto, for example by adhesive bonding. The other housing part is mounted, for example, onto the first housing part and fastened by means of a latching connection. In the process, the first and the second housing part surround a cavity in which the electrical and/or electronic components can be arranged. If one or more of the components has to optically interact with the surrounding area, as is the case in rain sensors and cameras for example, the housing part which bears against the windshield can have a corresponding cutout.
The electrical and/or electronic components have to be conductively connected to the on-board electronics system of the motor vehicle in order to be supplied with electrical energy and/or to be able to interchange signals with the on-board electronics system. To this end, the electrical and/or electronic components are connected to the on-board electronics system by way of corresponding electrical cables and also plugs and corresponding sockets.
Attempts are made to design the housing, in which the electrical and/or electronic components are arranged in the region of the windshield, to be as small as possible. One reason for this, amongst others, is that the view through the windshield, in particular for the driver, should be impaired as little as possible. In addition, the design of the interior compartment of the motor vehicle should be determined by the housing as little as possible. Consequently, the cavity available for this purpose should be of very narrow dimensions, as a result of which assembly and, in particular, cabling is relatively complicated and manufacture is made more expensive.